there was a concerning ruling in the united states about presidential immunity. the american bourgeois fake left is arguing it proves that the supreme court is a threat to democracy. rather, i think it's a demonstration of why you shouldn't politicize trivial issues and blow them out of proportion to score political points, and a reason for the democrats to take a good hard look at themselves for blowing the capitol hill fiasco out of proportion, and trying to politicize a non-issue and turn it into a specious, polarizing ballot question.

a couple of justices are arguing that the president of the united states is now above the law, and they might be correct, purely logically. if justices were doing math when they worked out their rulings, they'd have no choice but to deduce the clear outcome that the president is now indeed above the law. at some level, we expect our justices to behave in this way, as well. however, anybody who has looked at the issue in any depth at all knows that our court system is not this euclidean, archimedean system of kantian purity, but that, rather, it is the case that justices constantly contradict themselves, frequently in their own rulings. the legal philosophy in opposition to the idea that justices are perfect arbiters of truth and logic is called legal realism and is the same school of thought that produced critical legal studies, from which we got critical race theory. i would argue that, while any pure philosophy requires a dialectic to approximate reality, and that you will be led astray by uncritically following any philosophy, legal realism and critical legal studies are the approach to analysis that best approximates reality.

does the president have the right to assassinate an opponent, then? well, let's see what happens if one tries. i wouldn't expect the court to uphold that idea.

that doesn't mean i like the ruling, although i broadly agree with it.

 

for the issue at hand, what is trump charged with, exactly? i can't figure out what law he was supposed to have broken, or why this was sent to the supreme court at all. i have said almost nothing about this, because i'm not remotely interested in it, because i don't see a legitimate news story underlying it, but rather see a democratic party desperate to tar it's opponents any way it can and that's willing to sensationalize a story using warped narratives, flawed logic and poor media analysis in order to confuse voters. the only story here is that the democrats tried to blow the situation out of proportion to confuse voters for their own self-interest, and that it spectacularly backfired.

the supreme court should have simply argued that trump didn't actually break any laws, but it instead took advantage of the attempt to generate a politicized ruling by counter-politicizing the situation instead, after the democrats gave it to them as a gift. i can criticize them for that, as it is not archimedean and i wish they were. i don't blame them for it, and it's not a surprising outcome.

(i'm reminded of the part of the debate where biden attempted to criticize trump for firing his general, which was christmas in july for donald trump, who got to remind everybody how much he loves firing people)

the democrats need to actually understand that they no longer control the courts, and they need to take the case as a wake-up call. the democrats have previously been able to rely on the courts to take their side in politicized rulings, of which roe v. wade was actually an example of. that expectation is no longer realistic. if you drop a bullshit case on the lap of this court, it's going to make you pay for it.

biden can always try to test the theory by ordering trump assassinated and see what happens. it's not like he's going to live long enough to go to trial.

justin trudeau wouldn't know a cunning plan if it stood up in the house of commons with a cunning plan tshirt and demanded it be taken note of as a cunning plan, and then sang the cunning plan song, as it was being ejected from the house by the speaker.

i don't know how a person plans their way out of being disliked. 

it's politics. people have shelf lives and expire. trudeau is curdling up and needs to be thrown away.

but, them damned liberals and their infinite growth, right?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-liberal-caucus-st-pauls-byelection-1.7255883

there was some concern that these women wouldn't be prosecuted, or would even be seen as victims. *barf*.

i'm not going to pontificate about this from a basement in canada, as i don't know what this woman experienced, what she did, what material support she provided to a terrorist group, etc. but, there has to be legal consequences for knowingly participating in a terrorist group like isis.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-woman-terrorism-related-charges-1.7256463

no. listen.

there's value in trying to force him out rather than asking him to step down as it tests the level of support.

if they fail, it was a bad idea. if they succeed, the proof is in the pudding.

i didn't answer the question.

do i think biden should drop out?

not exactly.

however, i think that prominent democrats should to try to force him out, and see if they can. the only conceivable alternative is kamala harris, who is unlikely to win an election against anybody. yet, the reality is that she's almost certainly either going to take over when biden dies, or have to use section 4 of the 25th amendment when biden embarrasses himself one moment too far. the latter is a real possibility.

a democratic purist may suggest that, as harris is certain to take over, it is harris that should run at the top of the ticket. ok. there's an argument for that. the flip side is that biden has, to this point, been the stronger candidate. that might be changing.

if the democrats think that harris should be at the top of the ticket, they should mutiny and force biden out. however, i don't see any reason to suggest he should step down.

i thought i had an intestinal parasite a few years ago. i couldn't prove it, and i still can't, but i'm not convinced it is gone, or that it was never there.

that's the problem: i can't prove it. these things breed rapidly, and have been evolving for billions of years longer than we have. we're ultimately descended from them, very distantly. they're very sneaky.

what i learned doing research is that there's been murmurs in the western medical community for decades that the prevalence of parasites in western populations is dramatically higher than western governments want to acknowledge. american science conquered parasites sometime in the middle of the cold war with progressive sanitation practices. therefore, you only get parasites in backwards third world countries like mexico, china, cuba and russia.

so, you might have a parasite eating your brain, too, but the difference between you and a descendant of joseph kennedy is that you don't have access to the doctors or the medical equipment that he has, so he found his parasite and removed it, and you will never find yours, you'll just get dementia and die young, instead.

i am not fan of any of the kennedys. i don't know who killed jfk, but they did the world a favour, because jfk wasn't somebody that should have had his finger on the button. jfk was a deranged lunatic with a death wish that almost started world war three like five times. rfk seemed far more put together, but he was no less arrogant, and just as dangerous. it's less that rfk junior is the mental midget in the clan and more that the society has evolved since the 60s. if jfk walked through a time portal and ran for office tomorrow, you wouldn't like him any more than you like his half-retarded nephew, and you should realize that.

i have not posted about rfk jr and i'm not going to.

let us never speak of him again.

a small group of pro-hamas idiots blocked the pride parade in toronto, because they don't hate gay people. not at all. i would have went around them, but the parade organizers apparently didn't want to give them a headline.

i read a part of their vomited out manifesto, which declared solidarity with "palestinian homophobes", who don't "deserve this". that's a complicated moral question, as some of them do deserve this, which is the actual factual reason they're getting it, while others perhaps don't. blanket statements, in context, are not appropriate.

there appear to have been at least a couple of gay people in the group, unfortunately. in response to their solidarity, these "palestinian homophobes" would instantly kill and probably decapitate our naive canadian gay anti-semites. i believe the contemporary penalty for being gay in palestine is being thrown off of a building to your death. in iran, who is funding this, they execute you with construction equipment, and rip your head off your body. in public. like, with a crane. it's a huge mess.

the term "useful idiot" is most appropriate.

as i stated, he didn't come off as more senile than he did four years ago, he just came off as exhausted and unable to stay awake.

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3269228/joe-bidens-new-plan-after-debate-catastrophe-stop-doing-events-night

the trudeau government is in trouble and set to badly lose the next election. i've been waiting to see if they're going to alter some policies or pick a hill to die on, and it's become clear that the pmo would rather get crucified than win the election. this is expectedly foolish behaviour from an overwhelmingly juvenile collection of staffers put together by an overgrown child.

the opposition is focusing on the carbon tax, but this is red meat for it's base and not what is driving poll numbers. canada is dealing with an overpopulation problem, but it was the harper government that increased immigration to unsustainable levels in order to try to change the population dynamics in the country (in canada, brown people tend to be religious conservatives and vote for the tories, something that is also true in britain, which is a better way to understand canadian politics, and something the pmo refuses to understand, because it's mostly composed of people that went to school in the united states and get their politics from cenk uygur), and all that trudeau has done is hold to the policy set by harper. i've been pointing out for years that trudeau is just harper lite and historians will look back at the harper-trudeau years. trudeau is to harper as clinton was to reagan; trudeau was elected to overturn much of what harper did, but has instead been a caretaker government that has simply enforced the reforms made by harper, without adding much of anything at all of it's own (save a few poorly thought out ideas enforced on them by their coalition partners, the ndp). even the carbon tax, as it exists, is a dusted off harper policy. the consequences of overpopulation in canada include a housing crisis and inflation, which has been worsened by energy prices, which has been caused by global instability. the number of people that actually believe the false narrative that inflation was caused by printing money, or that it was decreased by monetary policy, is very low, and the number of people voting for decreased spending will be even lower. almost nobody in canada wants decreased government spending or reduced government services.

rather, i would suspect that the actual driver of trudeau's low poll numbers, which are concentrated mostly in young people, is the selection of internet reform bills. young people can no longer access half of the internet via facebook, and while the pmo has blamed facebook, it's pretty clear that young people are blaming the pmo. nor do young people want their speech restricted by an over-reach of government. 

these bills are unpopular and are probably what is actually driving trudeau's numbers down. it's not an exaggeration to state that, for many young people, trudeau ruined the internet.

this is a problem for two reasons.

the first is that the bills are supported by trudeau's political base, which is actually retired people that are voting for his father, and are afraid of the internet, because it's something new and scary and unknown. these bills are reactionary in the worst sense, but they are a reflection of the pmo's actual voting coalition, which is reactionary to it's core. the old folks love the guy, it's the kids that hate him. second, it is abundantly clear that trudeau believes in the idea of these bills and that trudeau, who has the psychology of a true believer, who is a dirty utopian idealist, will happily climb up on the cross to die for his beliefs, and is going to take the party and the country down with him.

the bills are illiberal. this is not a reaction against liberalism, but a reaction against illiberalism. 

the party should mutiny against the leader and pull back on these illiberal policies, in order to try to rebuild it's base. a few years ago, it was the conservatives that were dead in the water when their aging base died. somehow, the liberals have managed to seize generational defeat from the hands of clear victory by becoming nanny state conservatives. when the seniors die, the liberals will have nobody left to vote for them, and evaporate into history. if they don't pull back from the brink, we're going to have some serious problems in this country, which is extremely liberal, and yet which has no liberal political representation to vote for. that is an algorithm for the rise of a populist movement, which trudeau has created by pushing forward illiberal policies, and which he claims to be trying to fight against.

i'm further left than most people, and i would be disenfranchised anyways, but what they're doing is multiplying me two or three planks to the centre, and creating a generation of disenfranchised voters that are also economically poor voters that are susceptible to demagoguery as a result of their disenfranchisement and their lack of economic status. these are not conservative voters and will not be interested in voting for the natural opposition in this country, these are disenfranchised liberals that can no longer support the governing party, because it no longer reflects the ideals and values of the country's majority and are going to end up supporting some kind of alt-right because they are liberals and it is at least libertarian, and not because it is economically or socially right-wing.

trudeau is clintonizing canada, and turning toronto into detroit. they need to get him out of there before it's too late.

the best thing trudeau can do to stop a populist movement in canada is resign, because he's the reason one is developing, and not an antidote or solution to it.

this is a good article. i'm a leftist, but i'm a realist before i'm a leftist, and the most frustrating thing about the state of politics right now is that it is utopian and idealistic, both on the right and the left, and has lost it's grounding in reality.

i would like to see the united states, especially, drop it's utopian nonsense and return to some hardnosed realpolitik, and that is neither going to happen with biden nor with trump.

i want to add that the civilian criminals involved with oct 7th should be charged with crimes, extradited, sentenced and sent to jail for life sentences. i've been saying that from day one. the trials should be essentially show trials, and that is fine, as such a hideous crime deserves a show trial.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-two-big-lies

as a hard leftist that is constantly criticizing fake left bourgeois phony socialists, if i was in france, shouldn't i be in support of this supposed left-wing coalition?

the best answer i have for that is that i'm not in france. it's very hard for me to know the details of precise policy implications, and i'm not going to pretend i can tell french voters what is in their self-interest.

however, from a distance out here in canada (and i can at least say that i'm rather culturally aligned with the quebecois nationalists, even if i don't support independence, or the "quebec libre", as their dead fascist dictator once demanded), i would have to point out that the french "left" seems extremely right-wing, and the french "right" seems extremely left-wing.

i can at least tell you that, as a hard leftist, the french "left"'s recent embrace of the extreme islamic right and open support for right-wing terrorism doesn't seem very attractive to me, as a left-wing voter. it is the french "left" that is producing anti-semitic statements and has open bigots running for it, not the french "right".

this switcheroo is happening all over the world, one way or the other, sometimes incompletely, but it's pretty consistent.

that doesn't mean i'm going to sign up for french nationalism. i haven't signed up for quebecois nationalism, and it's a lot closer to me. however, i would ask any real french leftist to very carefully analyze it's temporary allies and determine which is closer to you ideologically and which is in truth a complete and total right-wing fraud.

i want to clarify something that i said earlier.

in canada and the united states, the government can take virtually any land from virtually anybody it wants, so long as it provides a fair compensation for it, which is a court-ordered remedy. that is, the compensation is a part of common law, not legislated law, and it's there because the government has a historical habit of just taking land without compensation. while this is in some way a consequence of colonialism, the connection is convoluted, and the state uses the process, called eminent domain, on non-indigenous owned land more frequently than on indigenous controlled land. it doesn't matter what it's for, either - it could be for highways, for infrastructure or, yes, for settlements. the courts just insist that when the government steals your land, it pays you a fair price, meaning what we have here is a court-enforced requirement that the state buy your land rather than steal it.

what i said previously was that i think israel should follow western precedent on eminent domain seizure as a guiding principle in how it deals with the west bank, which is obviously never going to be a palestinian state. it currently does not do that, it just takes it. the reality is that all western governments give themselves the right to eminent domain; what makes israel different is that it is not providing compensation, and that is what should change.

i'd like to see somebody walk around canberra with a video camera and ask people what their ancestors did to get sent there.

i bet more people know than you'd imagine.

the british conservative party is campaigning on a policy to fly illegal immigrants to rwanda. 

that's not a joke. that's an actual policy. it's based on an act of parliament that declares rwanda a "safe country" and is accompanied by a large cash transfer to the genocidal dictator of rwanda, who has run the country without elections since 2000. 

rwanda was of course the site of a relatively recent round of genocide, based on tribal bickering. you couldn't come up with something that was more mean-spirited if you tried to.

and, the media is concerned about marine le pen.

is there a core of a good idea here, though?

australia is apparently full. so, i might suggest instead that they make it an eu wide policy and that they exile all of the migrants to elba, and then dare them to try to escape to a stable of white horses waiting in a remote village not far outside of marseilles.

so, europe has a problem with immigration, but it has international law to deal with, as well. over-population has consequences, and we're dealing with it in canada, too. i actually don't think there would be much particularly wrong with shipping the migrants out to a detention centre on a remote island, so long as it's relatively humane conditions, and then processing them at a reasonable rate and sending them back. however, it would really have to be a block-level decision and not one made individually.

there is, thankfully, essentially no possibility that the tories are going to win the election on thursday, but they should not be allowed to live this down. this should be remembered at every election for decades.

this is the cycle where you should vote for the greens in the united states if you always wanted to but were afraid to. the united states needs a systemic third party that will pull the democrats left, even if they rarely or never win.

the reality is that trump might be the lesser evil, right now and that he's almost certainly correct in claiming that, in the long run, biden's presidency will be seen as the worst, or one of the worst. i've made that claim myself in this space, several years ago.

i would rank trump somewhere in the middle of the pack of presidents of the last 50 years. he was nowhere near as bad as bush, jr and he was nowhere near as corrupt as reagan. whether he was better or worse than clinton in terms of actual policy is a coin toss, even if clinton can honestly and fairly blame everything on the republican senate.

biden is more near bush jr territory - economic collapse, pointless wars due to incompetence and mismanagement at the highest level, the perception by others and projection of abject weakness, etc. all we need is miami to sink into the ocean this summer, and we're reliving history as farce.

vote green if you can.

as was the case in italy, fears that marine le pen is some kind of fascist are not supported by facts or evidence, although her father did have some pretty creepy policies. in fact, i would describe marine le pen as a real secular leftist, and contrast her against the fake left that has taken over the popular concept of what a left means. on virtually every point, including a strong embrace of secularism, le pen aligns on the traditional left, and not on the traditional right. this is actually very different than meloni in italy, who is by any definition of the term a very traditional conservative.

i took a look through their most recent platform the other day and while there are a few planks in it that are stupid (you don't want to refuse to educate the children of illegal immigrants. that is stupid. that is the last thing you want to do. if anything, you want to take them away from their parents and send the to boarding schools, but you don't want a mass of uneducated, economically disadvantaged immigrants in your country, that is an algorithm for crime.), i actually agreed with most of it, and i would have endorsed her over macron, which is stated as a hard leftist. 

france actually needs this. france needs somebody willing to strongly enforce women's rights in a society where they are perhaps waning. france needs a strong voice for secularism, to refresh the values of the revolution. french secularism is different than american secularism, and i would rather see most of the world adopt revolutionary french secularism than the more conservative voltaire-penned secularism of jeffersonian and madisonian democracy.

ultimately, le pen and her new friend there are being given the opportunity to show us what they're going to do. they might blow it in a barrage of stupid populism. or they might be a breath of fresh air and be exactly what france needs just right now. we'll have to see what they do.

i would not have endorsed biden anyways. i would suggest taking a very serious look at jill stein.

however, trump really destroyed biden on foreign policy, and that's not a comment about biden's age. as a canadian that cannot vote in the american elections, my primary concern is american foreign policy. trump was clearly the better candidate on that specific issue, in terms of specific polices and ideas. the primary reason i did not endorse biden in 2020 was that i worried his foreign policy would be a disaster, and i was correct. he is going to start world war three, if he hasn't already.

however, trump is awful on immigration (i say that as i realize that biden has been more vicious than trump was, despite what trump said) and awful on climate change. the united states does not have the kind of infrastructure problems that canada has. i actually think a partial solution to canada's housing crisis could be the united states accepting a substantial percentage of the refugees that have come here, as they have the infrastructure and we don't.

i don't care about the deficit in principle, as it is a meaningless abstraction. yet, massive tax cuts are not a good idea right now, as the country needs investment in public infrastructure.

i did watch the american presidential debate.

biden certainly looked awful, but i want to remind people that he wasn't that different 20 years ago. even then he frequently trailed off. i actually think this is a tactic to stop talking when he doesn't want to talk. it's a bad tactic, but he's been doing it so long that it appears to be intentional. i think he needs a new tactic, but i'd be hesitant to present it as evidence of cognitive decline, because he's always done that. he'd better stop, because if it didn't make him look senile then, it does now.

he frequently stumbled over words, but he has frequently publicized that he has a stutter.

yes, he looked and sounded awful, but that's what joe biden is normally like. i didn't see anything that suggested to me that he's lost control, even if there were moments that suggested he might not have much time left. my analysis would be that joe is still with us, but that he might not be in four years.

i have a different suggestion: the debate was at 21:00. that was probably past joe's bedtime. he was probably very sleepy.

i might advise that biden's team try to schedule debates earlier in the day, when the president can stay awake.

the supreme court of canada has already ruled that you can't criminalize suicide in this country. the website is clearly protected as free speech and via the right to bodily autonomy by canadian constitutional law, meaning the website has a clear constitutional right to exist. i would hope that the canadian civil liberties union is taking up the case.

the government should withdraw this obviously unconstitutional legislation before the court stikes it down and the crown should withdraw these unconstitutional charges before the court throws them out. this website is and should be entirely legal in this country.

“It just can’t be that easy,” Cohn, 38, told CTV News Toronto in an interview in March. “All he had to do was go to one website, and it was so easy to access.”

this is a completely backwards moral position. yes, it should be that easy, and the state has no right to restrict the individual, who has complete autonomy over their decision to live or die, from accessing the tools to harm themselves.

it must be that easy, under canadian law, and any attempt to make it harder is unconstitutional, due to s. 7 of the canadian constitution. in canada, we have the right to complete self-ownership. it should be that way in america, too - and i hope that it is, one day.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/don-t-care-says-pro-suicide-website-linked-to-kenneth-law-of-canada-s-online-harms-act-1.6942666

death threats over gender politics seems rather irrational.

however, when a transfemale shows up at a battered woman's shelter looking for help, it seems to me that it is beyond the need to explain that she is in dire need of assistance and it would consequently seem to me that an empathetic person, female or not, would and ought to be concerned about helping that person avoid being the victim of further or greater violence, rather than trying to figure out if they have a penis or not. the latter point doesn't strike me as very important.

i don't think that transgendered people want to be the focus of this kind of politics. this is petty and stupid.

perhaps rosie should start her own party, and call it the Blonde Party, where she can cry if she wants to, cry if she wants to.

after all.

you would cry too.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyxx243yr16o

seems as though jamaal bowman (a fake leftist (former) american congressman) is casualty #2 for the political mistake of sympathizing with hamas terrorists in public.

the bourgeois left may take a few more casualties to get the point, unfortunately. the oil-funded pro-arab lobby and the pro-muslim media are both very powerful in the west nowadays, but they only represent a fringe viewpoint that is out of touch with voters on the ground. i've been trying to get that point across, and a little bit of empirical evidence in the form of two "surprise upsets", one due to jews staying home (in toronto) and the other due to jews turning against an incumbent in a primary (in new york) is helpful to get the point across.

while i oppose conscription in most scenarios, israel is a special case; if a country is to have conscription, it should be applied to everybody equally. in principle. so, the israeli court ruling that orthodox jews are to be conscripted is the correct one.

however, i would suspect the idf would find itself extremely disappointed in the quality of orthodox conscripts, which is what happened in vietnam, and the reason the united states abandoned conscription.

i also want to point out that biden's team should look at these results closely, as well, as i've been pointing out for months that his politically-driven attempt to interfere in and police the conflict is going to badly backfire, as he is going to lose 10x as many votes for abandoning the jews in their fight against fascism as he would gain for siding with a terrorist group, due to some kind of feeling that they're being treated unfairly.

i'm not one to get preachy about morality, but the moral position here is abundantly clear, and it is siding with the israelis in their struggle against fascism. most people have very little difficulty figuring that out and realize very intuitively and very quickly that there is something very rotten about somebody that can't figure it out.

i would hope that the liberal party apparatchiks have a better analysis than this.

recent conservative results in the riding v liberal results:

2024: 15555 v 14965

2021: 13587 v 26429

2019: 12933 v 32494

2015: 15936 v 31481

2011: 17864 v 22409

2008: 13948 v 26286

2006: 15021 v 29295

2004: 11226 v 32171

before 2004, there were two right wing parties in canada and you have to add the two totals, but that should be done with some apprehension because a substantive number of red tories in ridings like this one would have become liberals after 2004. i'm going to do it anyways, with a caveat. it's also worth pointing out that the liberal swing to the right after martin lost them some votes to the ndp for a while, although they came back after the ndp committed suicide by electing tom mulcair.

2000: (10099+5457=15556) v 25358

1997: (11520+3564 = 15084) v 26389

1993: (12499 + 5727 = 18266) v 27775

in 1988, there was only one conservative party in ontario, and it won the riding, but the liberals still got over 20,000 votes in a riding with a much smaller population. it should be pointed out that 1984 and 1988 were massive landslides for the conservatives in canada and 1984 was a very bad year for liberals.

1988: 25206 v 21655

1984: 20914 v 16659

the liberals won in 1980 but, due to population growth, citing raw numbers is no longer helpful.

the claim in the article that her vote total of 14965 would usually be enough to win is pretty dubious. the average conservative turnout since 1993, not including yesterday, in actual real elections, was:

(13587 + 12933 + 15936 + 17864 + 13948 + 15021 + 11226 + 15556 + 15084 + 18266)/10 = 14942.

this is supposed to be a liberal stronghold, so winning by 20 votes is not "enough to win". indeed, the average liberal turnout over the same time period was:

(26429 + 32494 + 31481 + 22409 + 26286 + 29295 + 32171 + 25358 + 26389 + 27775)/10 = 28008.

don stewart's total was about the average turnout since 1993, give or take a reasonable margin. conversely, leslie church's total was roughly half of the average turnout since 1993, and over 10,000 votes less than any other liberal candidate since 1993.

it is abundantly clear that liberal voters decided not to vote in the byelection and i hope the liberals figure that out and adjust to allow for more democracy. leslie church has claimed she doesn't want to give up. this is not helpful, she should get the message and move on, or at least stand back and have an open nomination that lets the people in the riding choose their representatives.

i'm not a liberal, i'm a libertarian socialist. the bourgeois positions of the soft capitalist class constantly frustrate and annoy me. i'd rather vote ndp, but they're a bunch of phonies; every time the ndp actually gets elected, it results in budget cuts at the provincial level. the ndp can say what they want, but their record is clear: ndp governments are austerity governments, always. even olivia chow is pushing through austerity as the mayor of toronto. they're complete frauds, and i say that as a hard leftist.

it is because i am a hard leftist that i won't have anything to do with fascistic right-wing organization like hamas, and would utterly consternate anybody identifying as a leftist that expresses any remote level of sympathy for any level of arabic supremacist islamic fascism. that position is untenable. netanyahu is unquestionably the lesser evil.

as terrible as they are, the liberals are by far the least terrible party, and the conservatives are by far the most terrible party. they need to learn the actual lesson here, which is that there's a lack of democracy in this country, and that they need to increase grassroots participation. as a bourgeois party, the liberals have a longstanding problem understanding this, and it costs them elections every ten-fifteen years as a result of it. the conservatives are far better at getting grassroots voters involved, even as they constantly turn on them after they get elected.

canadians won't like pierre polievre and will dispose of him relatively quickly, if he accidentally wins. the liberal party should not let that happen by making the mistake of continuing to enforce candidates on voters.

and leslie church should absolutely move on.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/veteran-liberal-toronto-st-pauls

the results in the toronto byelection this morning are certainly notable. a parade of pollsters are going to react by claiming the liberals are headed for a massive defeat, and trudeau should resign.

i've been calling on trudeau to resign for years, but my analysis of the situation is rather different. i do have a math degree, and i have worked in polling. i tend to provide alternate analyses of the mainstream polling media.

if you look at the raw numbers, the conservatives were actually relatively flat, but the liberal numbers completely caved in. turnout was down 20%. these two things, together, indicate that what happened was more along the lines of that the liberals couldn't get their vote out rather than that there was some kind of massive swing right.

this is certainly cause for alarm, if you're a liberal (and i'm not), but there are a lot of reasonable explanations. it was game 7 in the stanley cup finals and with a canadian team, and perhaps the conservative base was a little more devoted to their cause than the liberal base. there were some concerns about trudeau's hamas sympathizing messaging (including repeating hamas blood libel propaganda, probably from facebook) in a very jewish riding, and that may have kept a lot of voters home. it's also worth pointing out that the liberal candidate was parachuted in, and replaced somebody with deep ties in the community, who was also rather clearly pushed out to make way for one of trudeau's friends. trudeau and his parachuted-in candidate may have been punished for kicking a popular elder out and replacing her with a backroom party operative that nobody knew anything about.

the liberals are certainly in trouble, but the national polling in canada is very difficult to distribute correctly, which is a point i've tried to help with and had some impressive results with. the liberals could conceivably win a majority and lose the popular vote. for that reason, they shouldn't freak out too much from bad national polling. yet, that is why this byelection was supposed to be helpful. unfortunately, the actual reality is that the byelection has too many anomalies to expect it to be representative, and i would advise avoiding using it to predict much of anything.

the lesson the liberals should learn is to stop parachuting in these backroom party hacks like this. the candidate lost because she was unknown in the riding and rejected by the voters for it. an mp's job is to represent their constituents. if they allow for a nomination in the riding, they should probably win the seat back in the general next year.

they pulled the heritage minute on louis riel, because it was "violent" and "scaring children". right. the obvious truth is that it isn't something the state wants indigenous people, or anybody else, thinking too much about, but rather something it wants to sweep under the rug of history and forget ever happened. it's not the end part that the state wants to forget, it's the part about revolting against the crown.

nonetheless, there's an easy way to get kids more involved, and that is to play music that they like.

the democrats are running on abortion.

hillary clinton once supported a constitutional amendment to restrict abortion rights. i don't think she ever reversed herself on that, either.

but, the democrats are running on abortion.

joe biden's response to the end of abortion rights, as president, was to tell people they should elect somebody that would stand up for their rights, and legislate abortion rights. not him, though, apparently. in fact, he nominated anti-abortion judges.

but, the democrats are running on abortion. they'll get lots of votes, too. so, why would they change anything, if they're getting lots of votes? it's a perennial vote driver.

there are lots of issues where the democrats have a history of being confusing or breaking promises, and this is one of the worst. if abortion is your ballot issue, be careful who you're voting for. you might not get what you're expecting.

the alberta ndp party is very small. according to the cbc article, it had 16,000 members a few months ago; that made it very easy for naheed nenshi to crash the party and buy his way into power. he received over 60,000 votes, which was a commanding win of 86%. 

yet, 63000/x = 0.86  <----> x = 63000/.86 = 73000. 

73000-63000 = 10000.

16000 - 10000 = 6000.

6000/16000 = 0.37.

 that also suggests he only got around 35-40% of historical ndp voters, and he brought the rest in.

then, is nenshi a viable candidate? yes, he is. but, he's a conservative.

this is essentially the same thing that jagmeet singh did and i would expect more or less the same outcome. on some level, nenshi may be viable, but traditional ndp voters are going to like him less than anybody else in the province and leftists don't have a lot of brand loyalty to parties that abandon their mandates. nenshi will appeal more to alienated progressive conservative voters than to ndp voters, but the trick is that there's 3x as many pc voters in alberta than ndp voters so that might actually work.

i would expect nenshi to destroy the party in the long run, even if he manages to win a term or two. you're not going to recognize the party when nenshi is done with it.

this depicts what people from the eastern mediterranean coast looked like c. 250 ce.

they're pretty white - partly from roman, greek, armenian and iranian migration, but there's not a lot of reason to think the migration patterns in the region were substantively different 1000 years previously. the migration patterns did change dramatically after the end of the last roman-persian war, when the region was depopulated, c. 650 ce.

jesus probably actually looked relatively similar to this guy:

something else that should be pointed out before i stop for the night, and this will upset people but it is true, is that the post-exile or post-captivity jews that "returned" to israel from babylon, and brought this religion that was heavily influenced by iranian zoroastrianism with them, probably interbred heavily with their iranian overlords and probably looked a whole lot more like modern russians or poles than they did like modern arabs, who have a substantive amount of subsaharan dna as a consequence of the arab slave trade. roman propaganda tells us that the ancient canaanites were darker skinned than they were, but it is extremely unlikely that they were as remotely as dark skinned as arabs are today. when the jews left israel after the roman exile and settled around the world, they were likely not very different looking than other southern european groups, meaning that this idea that they lightened their skin in europe is actually a mistake; rather, the jews that stayed in the south probably grew darker over time, due to the influx of dna from africa that occurred as a result of the arab slave trade.

if you're serious about decolonization as a concept, rather than a buzzword, you should fully comprehend that dearabization and deislamicization need to be placed at the conceptual core of decolonization, and the means everywhere where arabs and islam acted as a colonizing force; it means in both north and subsaharan africa, in the middle east, in eastern europe, in india, in iran, in central asia and in south-east asia. arabs are only indigenous to the south of the arabian peninsula, the area near yemen, and islam is only an indigenous religion in the deserts of arabia. it is a colonizing, imperializing force everywhere else in the world. 

if you don't include dearabization and deislamicization in your concept of decolonization, you are not serious about decolonization, you are just using the language to enforce and implement some other ideology, like arab supremacism, like anti-semitism or like islam itself.

in israel, what decolonization means in an actually coherent sense is dearabizing the genetically hebrew indigenous population, as it is arabs that colonized the region in the name of islam and that is what needs to be undone to decolonize it. palestinians are jews that were colonized by arabs and converted to islam, and they know it. that is what the truth actually is.

further, if you are a jew, you should realize you will attract more flies with honey than with vinegar, even if that looks difficult now. your grandchildren will thank you for making the effort.

there's another article here:

https://www.jpost.com/magazine/features/the-lost-palestinian-jews

as it turns out, ben gurion actually realized that the palestinians were descended from jews and proposed converting them, but the idea was abandoned. the science since his time has merely proven he was right. i think his ideas, which he left to us in his writings, should be revisited.

it's the only way to actual, real peace - not a hobson's choice peace, not "peace" at the end of a gun, but actual integration.

this is the only solution to the demographic problem.

i don't think force is required. contrary to popular myth and recent pseudo-science, cultural identity is not something inborn or inherent to the individual but a consequence of hegemonic conditioning. people tend to very happily convert by free choice, if conversion provides them with opportunity.

the reality is that the palestinians in the west bank are almost entirely hebrews with jewish roots that converted to islam because converting to islam gave them economic advantages. the israeli state should ensure that converting back to judaism is beneficial to the population in the west bank, and watch them do so, without needing to put a gun in their back.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/most-palestinians-are-descendants-of-jews/

this was at one point fringe, and then controversial, but it is now uncontroversial at all.

it has been thoroughly established using genetics that the palestinians are basically entirely hebrew in their ancestry.

https://www.shavei.org/blog/2016/06/05/palestinians-jewish-roots/

i was under the impression that his father celebrated festivus.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/ben-stiller-speaks-out-israel-hamas-war-need-peace-1235929874/

i watched an interview with jeremy corbyn and his butt buddy the other day (i think it was piers morgan) where, in response to piers pushing back on the idea of genocide in gaza, corbyn and his bud kept bringing up the situation in the west bank. they refused to discuss the situation in gaza at all, in their claims of israeli genocide, which is actually reflective of a level of dishonesty, as it indicates they knew their argument wasn't sound.

i've pointed this out myself a few times: there is a much better case for genocide in the west bank, which is a territory that israel absolutely wants, than there is in gaza, which the israeli fundamentalists don't consider a part of historical israel due it's status as being inhabited by philistines (a greek ethnic group that gave it's name to palestine, after the relatively successful roman attempt at genocide after a series of jewish revolts in the 2nd century, but which i have repeatedly pointed out that i think is an ethnic conflict dating to the punic wars) rather than jews. yes, that's crazy. it's also true. they would be more interested in annexing lebanon (which i learned recently is actually a hebrew word) than gaza. i mean, they withdrew from gaza, as they were settling the west bank.

this is very relevant information to understand how the israeli right views the situation:

as i pointed out a few days ago, israel has a convoluted but somewhat convincing legitimate historical claim to most of lebanon, but syria (and damascus) represents a very ancient border that was never settled by canaanites or other hebrew-speaking people but is rather the far edge of the iraqi mesopotamian crescent. the philistines are in the red area, but israeli fundamentalists consider the region foreign territory.

the west bank is, to these people, firmly a part of israel, and if you understand the history, it's actually very hard to argue with them. when the un created israel in 1948, it couldn't just ignore the fact that the population of the region was almost entirely arab and muslim, and it had been that way since (a) the crusaders were expelled and left and (b) the region was "arabized" under the process of islamic colonization, and the hebrews were converted from jews (and christians, the latter conversion having had already largely happened first) into muslims. certainly, the existing inhabitants of the region deserve some kind of compensation if the state is going to seize their land (as we would do in the west, and if israel wants to be a part of the west), but the west bank should be a part of israel, if there's to be any israel at all, and even if it means resettling the existing inhabitants in a fair and just way, such as financially compensating and resettling then in jordan, syria or egypt, giving them the opportunity to stay and convert (back) to judaism or even just letting them stay and be peaceful and get along, if they can. my actual criticism of israel is more directed at it's racist land ownership laws, and persistent attempts to enforce segregation. i support a single secular israeli state where everyone is equal under the law, regardless of race, religion, language or ethnicity (and you will note that, in the case of hebrew jews v. hebrew muslims, these differences are difficult to actually even define).

the point of this post is to ask people to look at the evidence before they knee jerk around what is likely an upcoming policy change in israel regarding the west bank. the media is painting this jewish minister smotrich as some kind of crazy person, and insisting we return not to oslo and clinton but all the way back to camp david and carter, while the reality on the ground is that you can't even call the west bank swiss cheese, anymore. what's left of palestinian settlement in the west bank is better described as a handful of low income ghettoes, and you can't build a country out of that. smotrich is reacting to reality. by insisting on two states and returning to oslo or camp david, you're the one that's out of touch and crazy.

if this outcome really upsets you so much, you should have reacted some time around oslo. it's too late now.

the discussion needs to be about finding ways to get equal rights for palestinians inside israel and in finding ways to get just financial settlements to the ones that leave, not in finding ways to have two states, and those holding to that idea are out of touch with reality. this upcoming change in policy is a foregone conclusion and a formality to acknowledge something that already happened over ten years ago.

immigration and housing, and how immigration has affected housing, is going to be a major issue in the next canadian election. unfortunately, we are going to be presented with the choice between being pro-immigrant (and voting to worsen the status quo) or being anti-immigrant (and also voting to worsen the status quo), when the issue is really not about immigration, but about the inevitable consequences of embracing neo-liberalism.

i randomly watched this video on youtube last night, for no good reason other than that it was in the sidebar:

is canada in a similar situation to china in the 1980s? not yet, but it is moving in that direction. what i want to draw attention to is not a comparison of china and canada but a discussion of what china did to reverse it's housing deficit into a housing supply.

we are going to need to do something similar in canada, or we will end up in the same situation as china.

increasing or decreasing immigration does not address the issue at hand, and these are subtle economic arguments that are more stochastic than causal. i mean, you can make a great argument for one approach or the other, and then something like covid happens, and everything you said becomes meaningless. increasing immigration even further might be good for the economy if a bunch of random stuff happens, or decreasing immigration might be better if a bunch of other random stuff happens, instead. you're not getting anywhere trying to make predictions when you don't have laboratory conditions. our smartest brains have utterly failed to turn economics into a science, and the people we elect to run our parliaments are very far from our smartest brains.

it's going to be very hard to break through this broken dichotomy.

but we need to strenuously avoid the temptation to politicize this and make about immigration policy. yes, immigration is putting strains on our housing, but we have 40 million people in a giant, vast land. we should be underpopulated. dramatically. yet, we've somehow overpopulated ourselves by making bad resource allocation decisions and very poor land use planning.

we need to find a way to build, build, build, build and not be distracted by the politics of migration or immigration, even as we should be apprehensive about letting too many social conservatives into the country, lest we wake up in iran, or texas.

most conflicts in world history are about concrete financial or resource concerns that can be negotiated and do not require violence to resolve. the israel-iran conflict is not like that, it is one of a much smaller number of conflicts that is about ideology, religion and race and has to actually be fought and one side has to lose and be conquered and be vanquished from history. israel doesn't have a choice but to try to minimize hezbollah's ability to strike, any way it can.

but, declaring "total war" against lebanon is not a good strategy.

israel needs to do the following:

1) build allies in lebanon with christian groups and maybe even try to reach out to the kurds, assyrians, armenians and other minorities in the middle east

2) try to push hezbollah out of power democratically

3) continue to sabotage hezbollah as much as possible

4) increase cross-border strikes to take out weapons depots and leaders as much as possible

it does not want a conventional war involving ground troops and it does not want to try to occupy lebanon without identifying a strong ally on the ground, first.

israel has to retaliate for the crazy missile strike from iran, and the way to do that is absolutely to dismantle hezbollah, but it has to be smart about it.

if israel were thinking this through properly, it would actually be prioritizing the distribution of aid with israeli flags on it. a primary objective of this conflict should be to ensure that every kid in gaza sees the israeli flag every time it eats and to completely sever the population's reliance on hamas to feeding it.

another option is for israel to actually distribute the food itself, or for the americans to do it itself. hamas is not going to infiltrate the marines the way it can infiltrate the un, and it will suffer the consequences if it blows up any green berets.

the importance of this cannot be underestimated. they have to get to the kids, and they need to feed the people by weaponizing food distribution as a propaganda tool. the israelis are being foolish in not realizing the importance of this and the americans need to be doing everything they can to prevent hamas from weaponizing the aid delivery, instead. this is foundational and imperative, if they want to build a lasting, generational peace.

and, they need to understand that this entire process kicks the idea of statehood down the road by several decades. this is no longer a serious idea and it can't be until the population is deradicalized.

yeah.

this isn't a bandcamp email. yet. i signed up for songtadr a couple of years ago to explore options, but didn't upload anything because i didn't like the terms.

expect a similar email from bandcamp soon. i will not be paying for bandcamp access.

conversely, i would like to get back to building my own site at inrirecords.bandcamp.com, but i cannot stay online for more than a few minutes at a time without getting hacked by the losers that are stalking me.

i may actually have to temporarily take everything offline. so, buy it now if you want it.

the united states air force has in fact been air dropping for a few months.

that's a better tactic than shipping in trucks. chretien though he heard drugs. i thought i heard guns.

they should continue and expand this approach.

https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/1057026/DHAD%20Manuscript%20%28E%20Wood%29%20Final%20Copy%20as%20published%2010-4-2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

has anybody thought about air-dropping food and supplies into gaza?

i'm a realist and i know that if you're a "civilian" in gaza in 2024, after nearly 20 years of hamas dictatorship, chances are high that you're at least sympathetic to the regime. this idea that there's millions of defenseless civilians being abused is not reality. nor should we single out the women as vulnerable in the 21st century.

however, there are kids. there's lots of kids because the psychotic government lets men rape their wives, criminalizes abortion and restricts access to birth control, and then encourages large families, despite the horrible living conditions. getting the birth rate down in gaza should be an international priority. in the mean time, you need to feed the kids, who are the most vulnerable victims of the regime, even if you don't sympathize with the idea that the adults are truly civilians.

there is no way to create a centralized distribution center that will not be taken over by hamas and weaponized. so, the tactic should be to decentralize aid.

i'm not a military engineer, and they would have better ways to decentralize aid, once the situation is clearly stated to them. air-dropping it seems like an obvious solution.

after the oct 7 terrorist attack, israel cannot allow hezbollah to sit on it's border and threaten it's safety.

war is inevitable and something israel has to do. further, they will need help, and the west should be coming to their aid.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/17/us-envoy-due-in-israel-to-avert-wider-escalation-of-conflict-with-lebanon-amos-hochstein

when i was very little, my favourite movie was ghostbusters. i was very young, but i was smart enough to know who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. 

(i also realized that the hard g in 'gh' is unusual, and that the gh combination is usually vocalized as a silent g in the english language. while i know of no example of a hard gh in english that is not followed by a vowel, there are examples of a soft gh that are followed by a vowel (laughingstock), and the general consensus is that there is a rule of thumb but not a general rule and you have to learn each word and remember it. the rule of thumb is that gh + vowel is usually hard but i did not know that, i thought gh was always soft, and as such i mispronounced the word, and defended my argument when challenged.)

then i tried to talk to the other kids about the movie and i found out that all they wanted to talk about were the ghosts, as though the ghosts were the protagonists in the film. i even recall somebody telling me that egon was a loser and slimer was the coolest.

that's exactly when i first knew that i was going to have a rough life in this world and that the other humans on this planet were going to be a fucking problem.

elon.

if you make robots look like humans, people will want to treat them like humans, and people will want them to act like humans. if robots act and look and behave like humans, we'll have to give them rights.

we don't want to give robots rights. it defeats the point.

robots consequently should not look like humans, even if they are dumb pieces of steel. robots could perhaps look like dogs or horses. i'd rather they be designed for maximum utility and look like conveyor belts.

this is important. if you're the one doing this, then how you design them will determine whether we can use these things to work for us or not. if we turn them into steel humans and give them rights, we're ending the possibility that we can use these things to emancipate us from tedious labour, which is supposed to be the point.

i don't want smart robots or robots that can think or feel to exist. i want robots to remain stupid, brute slaves with no ability to understand what's outside of the cave. we need slaves to have a civilization, and robots are the only humane way to do that. don't ruin it by giving them sentience.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/13/elon-musk-says-optimus-robots-could-make-tesla-25-trillion-company-.html

a proper treatment of the topic would require a lot more detail than i can present here right this minute, but post-captivity judaism is very obviously an iranian sky god religion that is dominantly influenced by zoroastrianism, whereas the archaeology makes it abundantly clear that the people that lived in the southern levant before the assyrian destruction event were phoenician pagans that worshipped gods like baal and tanit.

it follows that judaism (and it's christian and muslim offshoots) is an introduced indo-european religion and not an ancient semitic religion and that the fact that these resettled jews were basically persians had a lot to do with their preferential treatment in the persian empire, beyond the persian's general phil-phoenicianism, which stemmed from the persian culture's inability to build ships or engage in maritime trade, or naval warfare. the persians needed the phoenicians to fight the greeks.

what that means is that you just can't separate the jews from the lebs until cyrus and persia show up, which is really pretty late in the region's history. if your historical references to israel are from the mythical david and solomon era (of which there is no empirical support for...), then lebanon does in fact become a part of greater "hebrewistan".

but this is crazy.

what is more important is the fact that 40% of lebanon is christian, and they are facing the threat of severe persecution under fundamentalist iranian hegemony. they have worked with israel in past civil wars. they are natural allies in any serious war with hezbollah, and will likely be decisive allies. the question of political union between lebanon and israel based on the consent of the governed is realistic, and doesn't require talking about conquering lebanon, or asking who built tyre and sidon or whatever.

do the jews have any historical claim to lebanon?

the short answer is "not exactly". but, i have a more subtle answer.

with the current nonsense on the fake left about arabs being victims of colonialism, it's easy to forget that the arabs actually invented colonialism as we understand it today, and that it (along with chattel slavery of africans based not on their status as black but rather due to them being non-muslims) was copied by the spaniards, with the blessing of the pope, via the dum diversas. colonialism as we understand it today is not something that was invented by white people to oppress brown people, but was something that was invented by arabs to oppress non-muslims. the cultural interchange between crazy christians and crazy muslims was complex; jihad was actually invented by a christian emperor named heraclius, and used to reconquer jerusalem from the persians, before it turned into the idea of the crusades, and was copied by the arabs during the apocalyptic period that followed the last roman-persian war, which was catastrophic for both sides. however, colonialism and slavery (as we understand them today) were both their idea first, and copied by spaniards in order to compete with them, during the reconquista. history has somehow forgotten that christopher colombus was actually brown and that the genocidal spaniards that followed him were all part arab bastards with tanned or brown skin as well. christianity itself was invented by and spread by brown southerners northwards, in an attempt to settle the lighter skinned german, slavic and celtic speaking people of northern europe.

arabic colonialism, which started around the year 700 ce and peaked around the year 1258 ce before entering a period of decline after the mongolian sack of baghdad (an arab city built on top of a greek city built on top of the persified ruins of babylon), created a large contiguously ruled region of the middle east and north africa with a common language and religion and very different ethnic identities. the people of north africa know they have a history older than islam, even if they can't fully articulate it due to it being lost or destroyed, and largely identify as a disparate group of people that are not arabs. the iranians kept their language and modified the religion of the arabs and know they are not arabs and get angry when you suggest they are. my theory of kurdish origins is that the kurds descend from mesopotamian persians and greeks fleeing the arabic invasion c. 700 and the etymology of kurd as 'refugee' is the correct one. they have held out in the mountains, resisting arabic colonization, for centuries. asian migrants named turks entered the region with the mongols and maintained their identity where they settled, eventually succeeding in conquering rome, where the arabs had failed for centuries (legend has it due to a giant bulgarian-built catapult, but in truth due to the slow decline of a decaying imperial force). the arabs were most successful in colonizing iraq, and arguably nearly succeeded in colonizing egypt; in egypt, they know their history, but have largely chosen to identify as arabs. likewise, most palestinians are fully aware that they are actually colonized and converted hebrews and not migratory arabs, but they have decided to ignore that, and have in varying levels of sincerity adopted a founding myth about canaanite continuity that no archaeologist takes seriously. the dna tests are really pretty clear.

lebanon is actually most similar to iran in that they know they are not arabs and do not like it when you tell them they are. but, who are the lebanese?

the lebanese are the descendants of the phoenicians and carthaginians, and my understanding of the actual history (not the biblical history) is that you cannot differentiate between hebrews and phoenicians, who probably called themselves canaanites. the roman genocide of the ancient lebanese was so thorough that we only have scattered fragments of their language, but it was basically ancient hebrew, and we cannot even state with certainty what they called themselves, but it strongly appears to be canaanites. the religion of the ancient hebrew masses was likely not post-cyrus judaism (a fact alluded to in the old testament myths, as the people are constantly being punished for not worshipping yahweh), but the ancient canaanite religion of the region, which was the same religion as the phoenicians and carthaginians. it is even likely that the roman persecution of the jews, which happened centuries before constantine purportedly saw a genocidal vision in the sky, was based on the identification of jews with carthaginians and the realization that cato's mission had not been fully accomplished. the idea that jews eat babies appears to be based on roman propaganda from the punic wars, which may or may not have had some basis in fact, as there is some evidence of child sacrifice occurring in carthage. the story of abraham and isaac in the old testament is probably a memory of ancient canaanite/hebrew/carthaginian/phoenecian child sacrifice rituals, and likely records how the authorities changed this practice, some time around or perhaps before the persian conquest undid the assyrian captivity.

if the phoenicians were in fact a branch of northern hebrews that existed before the return from captivity established a jewish origin myth and national and cultural identity, it does follow that lebanon might belong in a greater israel.

...if you're insane.

which these people are.

i want to ask a different question, and it is this: would the substantive christian minority in lebanon rather live under iranian hegemony, or be a part of israel?

the lebanese people are entitled to self-determination. and, if the shit hits the fan, israel may find itself with allies in lebanon that are interested in political union.

One tradition holds that the Black Stone was placed by Adam in the original Kaaba.[49] Muslims believe that the stone was originally pure and dazzling white, but has since turned black because of the sins of the people who touch it.

yikes.

i'm not a christian, but i'm mostly european (i'm a little bit native american and a little bit jewish, too) and the closest thing i can compare this hajj thing to in european christian history is the crusades.

it's craziness.

they need to cancel it.

what kind of stupid religion keeps putting on an event every year when the result is that people always die?

the muslim world needs to cancel this stupid barbaric hajj ritual, where people die of stampedes or dehydration every year. it's the dumbest part of the dumbest religion out there.

it's actual a very worrying development to see the israeli military disobey civilian oversight, even if you think they should do so in order to get the aid in, which i don't really agree with, given that hamas is just going to take control of it when it gets there. the un needs to find better ways to distribute food that bypass or circumvent the terrorist group and israel should absolutely be trying to make it look like they're the ones handing out the food, not the terrorists.

israel likes to make sure everybody knows it's a democracy, and it is, to an extent. that is true. but it has been careening towards dictatorship for many years now.

the military should be listening to the government. there is no valid excuse for not doing so.

this is also reflective of the reality that the democratic party is in desperate need of generational change.

biden wants to turn the clocks back to 1980. the democratic party needs somebody that wants to turn them forwards to 2080.

the statements coming from the g7 on the israel issue are like statements written in 1975, coming to us via a time machine.

i read an article accusing joe biden of being stuck in the 90s. no. he's actually stuck in the 70s.

somebody needs to explain to biden and his binkie that their concept of the middle east is so out of touch with reality on the ground that they should refrain from interfering, not try to place the peacemaker and just get out of the way, because they are so divorced from reality that all they can do is make the situation worse.

i don't like that i'm falling in line behind republican statements, but joe biden's middle eastern policy is indiscernible from jimmy carter's, and having this doddering, out of touch old man trying to interfere in events on the ground from a perspective that belongs to 50 years ago is the last thing the world needs.

he's going to do more to hinder than to help and should focus on his own fucking country.

this guy tony blinken really is the incarnation of neville chamberlain. i've never seen a dumber liberal that's less able to learn the lessons of the past, or more willing to repeat the mistakes of the past.

they want to put the plo in charge of gaza, but this is a non-starter. to begin with, the voters in gaza rejected fatah in the last election, which was 2006. the plo has absolutely zero democratic legitimacy in the region and forcing them into power will probably even lead to a civil war.

if gaza is to return to self-rule, it clearly needs fresh elections. there is no way to avoid this, it's mandatory. otherwise, this was a waste of time.

however, i don't think gaza should return to self-rule at the moment. democracy has certain prerequisites and they simply aren't being met. the outcome is predictable.

they want a plan. i get it. i think israel has a plan, they're just apprehensive about telling us. the plan needs to be (and probably is) that the united nations takes on the role of a civilian government, while israel maintains military control, for the foreseeable future. this un-backed civilian government needs to focus on re-educating the population and minimizing the role of islamic fundamentalism.

fresh elections to transfer power to a civilian authority should be scheduled for c. 2040ish, once the re-education process has produced a new generation of leaders.

any attempt to transfer to self-rule, including via the plo, is just going to result in more violence. this is stupid and shouldn't be given the time of day as a serious option.

there's some articles up about lia thomas not having standing to fight her competition ban because she's not a member of the usa team (which is legally convincing enough, and does point to her need to deal with the issue locally, first). i want to change the topic.

i'm not very interested in sports, but this kind of gets to the core of trans acceptance issues. i've pointed out before that there is no evidence that men are better at swimming than women and quite a bit of evidence pointing to the suggestion that women are actually better at swimming than men, but i'm trying to get my argument across that gender isn't a very useful way to create fair competition pools in the modern era and that more objective empirical characteristics should be considered instead. 

gender is really meaningless and should be seen as such. in swimming, the most important physical characteristic is height - taller swimmers perform better than shorter ones. so, the question that should be being asked shouldn't be if lia thomas' gender gives her some kind of advantage (there is literally no science supporting that idea, it's actually blatant sexist bullshit) but if her height does.

lia is in fact at the very extreme of variation in her competition pool, in terms of height. she is not substantively taller than her closest competitor, but she is at the very top of the list.

https://www.essentiallysports.com/us-sports-news-olympics-news-swimming-news-how-tall-is-lia-thomas-compared-to-usa-swimmings-best-female-athletes/

you could consequently argue that lia's height does give her the same type of advantage that the other elite competitors that are at or around 6 feet have over shorter swimmers. and, i would agree that something should be done about that.

instead of having women compete against women, and men compete against men, why not have pools based on height so that people that are 5" 4' can compete against people their own size, and people in the 6 foot or higher range can also swim against people their own size, as well?

if you find the fact that lia is intimidating at 6 feet tall, i'll point out to you that the elite male swimmers are all four or five inches taller than her. that isn't fair, either. her height is actually closer to female variation, in context.

the loser stalking me from upstairs has begun to "ni" at me, and while i appreciate the absurdity of this, i'm also just about to fucking snap.

this guy openly admits that he works for israeli intelligence, but what he's doing here - going to michigan and explaining to the dumb kids that hamas is a right-wing fundamentalist islamic militant group and not a socialist revolutionary movement - is extremely necessary, because the dumb kids actually think that hamas is like che guavara or something rather than indistinguishable from isis, as it has become recently. it's a failure in education, so a university is the right place to do it.

i've written a little about this myself. the actual reality is that hamas would immediately shoot most of these stupid protesters on contact. you'd be lucky to get sent to prison. they would just kill you. instantly.

as jello biafra once said, "you'd be the first to go".

so, yes, he's working for israeli intelligence, and he admits it, but it doesn't matter. if you're a hamas sympathizer, you should listen to this.

not all arabs are fundamentalist muslims, but almost all arabs are in fact crazy. yikes. you can take the islam out of the arab, but you can't take the crazy out.

it's a reminder that israel does actually have arab allies in it's fight against hamas, and that is something worth realizing. that is something the media doesn't want you to realize.

in fact, i probably have facebook posts from as far back as 2010 referring to israel's policies in palestine as "genocide", and distinctly recall having conversations with people where i present "genocide" as a more accurate description than "apartheid" over the 2011-2013 period, for the reason that israel simply does not want to enslave the palestinians and never did, it wants to exterminate them. i have not posted pre-2013 posts here yet.

the apartheid comparison was empirically terrible.

i presented genocide as something that was more accurate. 

did i author this? i dunno.

 

the team also unveiled special terry fox shorts (not pictured) in the form of unisex skirts.

https://www.tricitynews.com/local-news/these-special-basketball-jerseys-commemorate-port-coquitlams-terry-fox-9067701

it's been 55 years since the 1967 war and the arabs and jews hate each other now more than ever.

segregation has been a complete failure, in terms of creating a stable peace.

some other approach is required.

i've been periodically googling chomsky for his response to the gaza mess because i was curious. i would actually expect his response to be a little different from that on the current fake left, as chomsky was an unabashed zionist that was critical of the state of israel's behaviour because he thought it put the zionist project under threat of destruction and not somebody that hated himself or wanted israel to disappear. chomsky always was clear that he supported a zero state solution, preferred a single state as a pragmatic approach (years ago, he would bring up yugoslavia...) and thought two states was an absurdity and a non-starter. chomsky wanted to support palestinian self-determination in the context of zionism rather than in opposition to it, which made him an anachronism. but, i think his position was preferable to anything we've heard on the left or the right since camp david. the idea of two states has been an utter failure and the insistence on segregation has simply led to entrenched divisions and perpetual conflict. he saw that coming, and he was right.

i would certainly have expected noam to be critical of israel's response as being disproportionate. but, what i've been struggling with trying to define is what "proportionate" means in the context of such a vicious attack and concluded that a proportionate response is a ferocious one intended to produce a strong disincentive. i would have liked to hear him try to articulate his concept of proportionality, and i'm sure he would have brought up something i hadn't thought about, even if i disagreed with him. i don't think he would have aligned with the hamas sympathizers.

unfortunately, we're going to all need to figure that out on our own.

the left is going to be a very different place without noam chomsky, who has played the role of virtual yoda since before my father was born, and before there was even a yoda. but, this was predictable. eventually.

and so it goes.

this is predictable, and what happens when you negotiate with terrorists - they interpret hostage taking as an effective extortion strategy and they do it again.

expect further kidnappings by iranian proxies, because our reaction to the kidnappings in gaza has demonstrated to them that it's an effective strategy.

https://dppa.un.org/en/yemen-un-chief-demands-release-of-aid-workers-held-houthis

yeah.

labour may actually lose popular support, in comparison to 2017, but the tories are getting hammered by nigel farage, and if they don't think sunak's ethnicity is a component of that, they need to wake up.

i'm a hardly a tory supporter, even if i would expect a starmer pmo to be disappointing, to say the least. however, there's been no uptick in labour support. at all.

sunak should have resigned to allow another leadership race, rather than call an election, but labour will take the easy win.

is the actual truth that rishi sunak is losing horribly because he's not an indigenous brit?

well, i have some sympathy for that position. unlike canada or the united states, the united kingdom is not a colonial state. 

brits have every right to expect self-rule and to want to elect somebody that looks like them.

the united nations has been clear for decades that any negotiation with terrorist groups is in contravention of international law. no exceptions*.

* except when the victims are jews.

further, the unsc resolution adopted yesterday appears to rather blatantly contradict previous unsc resolutions that ban any negotiation with terrorism, but...this body is subject to no oversight and it's resolutions have no legal force, so of what consequence is it when it contradicts itself, other than to challenge it's relevance and validity?

a body that contradicts itself with no mechanism for oversight is of no consequence.

(2)  Consular roles do not include:

(a)  Participation in developing and implementing a ransom strategy.  Such activity is contrary to U.S. Government policy on hostage taking and kidnapping.  (See 7 FAM 1821 e and 7 FAM 1823.)

(b)  Encouraging families or employers to negotiate with hostage takers.  Such activity is contrary to U.S. Government policy on hostage taking and kidnapping.  (See 7 FAM 1821 e and 7 FAM 1823.)

The U.S. Government will make no concessions to individuals or groups holding official or private U.S. citizens hostage.  The United States will use every appropriate resource to gain the safe return of U.S. citizens who are held hostage.  At the same time, it is U.S. Government policy to deny hostage takers the benefits of ransom, prisoner releases, policy changes, or other acts of concession.  See 7 FAM 1821 e regarding U.S. Government policy and limitations on the role of Foreign Service posts and the Department of State should private citizens, organizations or companies elect to negotiate with hostage takers or pay ransom.

https://fam.state.gov/fam/07fam/07fam1820.html

frankly, i think an impeachment hearing for anthony blinken is justified, based on the news reports i'm hearing.

the legality of blinken negotiating with hamas, or ordering that israel do so, is an open question in american law.

the supreme court would seem to think it's illegal, but obama tried to evade it via an executive order.

https://archive.law.upenn.edu/live/files/5494-khaw---hostage-negotiations-with-terrorists-10

as far as i can tell, the biden administration has not even addressed the issue at all. 

some pressure should be placed on the biden administration to explain why it has decided to negotiate with a terrorist group, all of a sudden, and without providing any explanation or justification for doing so.

i mean, do you remember what happened to jimmy carter with the iranian hostages?

i don't either, although i've read about it. almost nobody alive remembers that.

joe biden remembers.

is it even illegal for the united states to negotiate with hamas, or demand israel does?